


now let us turn our horse into a man

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [302]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alexander the Horse, Bedtime Stories, Frog creeping around looking for his favorites, Gen, Memories, Post-Amputation, set directly after the fic 'in low place not in high place' concludes, the night after Estrela helps Maedhros sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26557459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "His rider to a spirit, if we can."- John Bunyan, Upon the Horse and His Rider
Relationships: Amlach & Arien, Amlach & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [302]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	now let us turn our horse into a man

Before it grew dark, Sticks said that Estrela was staying with Russandol. Frog could not be pleased with this; every other time, Estrela had told him herself. Had petted his hair and told him that he must not be lonely; she was keeping Russandol from being lonely, too.

Frog liked to feel brave, and so he hugged her legs and nuzzled up against her petting hand, and now that he was talking, he said, “Yes.”

But tonight he hadn’t known. He was desolate at supper; Aredhel and Beren between them contrived to steal a scrap of precious honeycomb from the kitchen for him.

He _did_ eat it, but it didn’t help.

“There’s nothing you can do for him,” Sticks said at last. Said it _impatient_ , as if it was like _old days_ , when Frog couldn’t talk at all.

Frog hated her. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue and then slipped under the table to cry. But there were legs under the table, so many legs all stumping and kicking together, like the long, wavering body of a strange insect he had seen once, shiny and black beneath its layer of dust.

So many legs, it had, and how they twitched even when crushed under the Mountain’s foot! Frog squeezed his eyes shut amid the boots that were waving and waggling _here_. He came back up again, breaking to the surface like a fish leaping from the water.

Sticks looked at him, corner-wise. Frog did not cry after all.

When they had gone into the water some days ago—the broad, shining water—he had seen no fish.

Later, he was sorry for hating Sticks (when she was asleep and breathing like the kittens). He unrolled himself up out of the blankets that they shared. The fire crackled, friendly and fierce. Only them on this side of the hall, kept warm, with Soldier (Gwindor) and Wachiwi, Beren’s laughing friend. Other breathing bodies were shadowed lumps, farther off in the dark.

Wachiwi stayed awake for a long time, most nights. She was waiting. But Frog stood very still now, looking at her, and was satisfied that she was gone, gone.

The hall was long and cold.

His feet were bare. They went quieter, like that.

He wasn’t thinking of anything, now, just pressing his fingers into the chinks where the pieces of the wall fit together. He could hear his own breath, his own bumping heart.

 _Your heart pushes all the blood into your body,_ Estrela said once, when she was Belle. She said it very soft, because she always spoke in secrets there. Whether she told him words in her Geese-language (that was what Sticks called it), or about the little birds that made their homes in summer trees, it was soft.

Frog knew how to open the door of Russandol’s room. It was never locked.

When he passed through it, all the lights were gone. Only the white moon smiled in through the window, giving a greeting to him alone.

Estrela was sleeping beside the bed, and Fingon was under the window.

 _Fingon, first cano_ , thought Frog jealously, but he couldn’t think on that long, because Russandol was awake and watching him. _Eyes_ , yes, but they weren’t outside of Russandol’s face. They were good eyes, always, and Frog tried to remember them most when he was frightened and falling, under and under what was not water.

They said no words when they saw each other. Instead, Russandol picked up his nice hand and beckoned with it. Frog went high on his toes, walking secret, and scuttled around the foot of the bed. Then he climbed up and sat cross-legged on it. He was careful of Russandol’s long feet as he did so. Russandol had a leg that hurt—a whole body that hurt—and Estrela said it was important not to touch him.

“ _Bairn_ ,” Russandol whispered, in a voice that was just an inch high, to Frog’s mind. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Strela.”

“Oh. Yes. She’s here.”

“Sleeping,” Frog agreed, mouthing the words just like Russandol did. 

Russandol put his hand on the bed and dragged himself after it, so that a space was made for Frog. His breathing arced in a high hill when he did it.

“You can,” he said, still whistling a little.

Frog lay flat on his back on the space. It was warm, and it smelled like Russandol. Sharp and iron and kind.

“Why is Fingon _cano_?” he asked. The question had been plaguing him.

Russandol said, after a moment, “When we were small…”

Frog almost giggled. He _did_ giggle, really, and he put both his hands over his mouth. “You were small?”

Before he answered, Russandol breathed a soft _whoosh_ , like a horse, and that reminded Frog of something else. “Yes. Just like you, bairn. We were small. Fingon was smaller. Just a baby. He made little growls.”

“Oh,” said Frog. Then he propped himself up, and said, “I saw Alexander.”

Russandol forgot his quiet, just a little. “What?”

Under the window, Fingon stirred. Russandol and Frog lay perfectly still, as if they were dead. Frog always imagined, when he saw sleeping, that it was _dead_. Sometimes he cried.

“Alexander?” Russandol asked, when Fingon had gone back to snoring. “Who do you mean?”

“Your horse. Little Red said…said he was.” Frog put his hands over his ears, now, so that he couldn’t hear his voice at all. The first time he came to know horses, to know them as friends, he had still been a little frightened of them. But the great ruddy chestnut one was not frightening at all. “I like him. He is big and tall. He looks like you.”

“I thought…” Russandol said, but he did not say what he thought. Frog was on his right side; the arm with no hand was tucked up against Russandol’s chest.

“Do you ride him?”

“I used to.”

“Small?”

“No—not when I was small. He is a very big horse, you know.”

“Yes,” said Frog. He lifted the edge of the blanket—the air was cold—and tucked himself under it. “Can I ride him?”

“Perhaps when you are a little older, _cano_.”

It was just then that Fingon sat straight up on the floor. His hair was all a tangle around his head—it was almost as stiff and straight as Frog’s own, and thus prone to brushing up like, in truth, a horse’s tail. “Maitimo,” Fingon said, calling Russandol by one of the names Frog didn’t like to hear, “Maitimo, are you all right?”

“Yes. I’ve just a visitor.”

Fingon was on his feet, and Frog curled like a grub, waiting to feel hard hands dragging him away. But then Russandol said,

“He didn’t wake me.”

Estrela groaned a little, in her sleep, which meant she was close to waking too. Frog knew that her dreams were often bad ones. But sometimes they were good, and even those could make her cry.

Fingon was lighting a lamp. Frog did not want the light; he liked how safe the dark was, next to Russandol. If he put his hand out a little farther he could have put his fingers into the grooves of Russandol’s ribs.

“Do you need anything, Maitimo? A little water?”

“I really am well,” said Russandol.

Fingon sat down in the chair, rubbing his eyes. Russandol’s mouth did funny things: it seemed to want to smile, and then turned down like crying, but when Fingon opened his eyes and shook his head like a silly dog, Russandol’s face was pleasant and still.

 _Dead_ , thought Frog, and it made him quite sad.

“ _Cano_ ,” said Russandol, speaking to Fingon, “You can go back to sleep. I’ll wake you if there’s any trouble. You know I make a storm of noise, when I need to.”

“I don’t like to think of you—thinking, in the dark,” said Fingon.

“Hmm. Well, it was ever a favorite pastime of mine. Frog knows.” And Russandol’s left hand crossed his breast, crossed the tightly folded right arm, and stroked Frog’s hair.

“You were _small_ ,” said Frog to Fingon, feeling bold.

“What?” Fingon, like Gwindor, did not always know how to speak to “brats.” He wanted to, but he had not Russandol’s easy talking.

“I was telling him of…long ago,” Russandol explained.

“Yes,” said Frog, watching how Fingon’s face changed now. Then, trying his luck—“Tell a story.”

“Frog,” said Fingon, a little sternly. “Russandol needs his rest.”

But Russandol cleared his throat and began. “Once upon a time,” he said, while Frog snuggled in delight. “There were two small boys, and one was afraid of horses.”

The story was not about Fingon and Russandol, as Frog had feared it might be. It was about Maglor—the oldest _cano_ , and also the unfriendliest. When Maglor and Russandol were only babies—there was a horse, almost as big as Alexander, who lived in their barn.

“A very gentle horse,” said Russandol. “Maglor liked it, because of its velvet nose.”

Frog nodded his head against the pillow. He, too, had been persuaded to think differently of the monstrous creatures on account of a velvet nose.

“I wanted nothing to do with it. But Maglor—and it was just us two—liked to be brought to the barn each day. I realized, then, that if I let him see my fear, there’d be no end of trouble. He would not like horses _forever_ , for, though we were both small, I was older.”

“Like Sticks.”

“Yes, like Sticks. And if Sticks told you something, you would remember it, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t always _mind_ ,” said Frog, cautiously.

Russandol’s breath tripped a little. A laugh? “No, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “But you would _remember_ , wouldn’t you?”

Frog nodded. He put his hand a little closer to Russandol’s side.

“Very well,” said Russandol. “I couldn’t be afraid of the horse—or of any other horses—because then Maglor would be afraid, too. So I slipped in one evening, when I should have been in bed, just as I am now, and visited the horse alone.”

Frog imagined Russandol, still taller but not _so_ much taller, creeping about in the dark.

“Couldn’t see a blessed thing, of course. The shadows were all broad and deep, and I could hear my breath sawing in and out. But then I realized—there was only the one horse, at the time, we had more later—that I could hear the horse breathing, too. And it wasn’t a bad sound. It was just as you must have heard Alexander breathe. A sort of comforting _whoosh_. I was…” He paused. “I was glad not to be alone.”

Frog did not touch Russandol’s side. He reached up and patted the shoulder that belonged to the right arm, the arm with no hand. He patted very lightly.

Everyone stayed quiet.

Then Estrela’s voice, speaking from the other side of the bed, said,

“Frog, love. You’ve had your fun. Come and sleep with me, so that you don’t kick Russandol.”

Frog turned his face up to see what Russandol thought, and Russandol tucked his eyebrows down a little and nodded, as if to say that Frog had better go.

So Frog scrambled out of the bed onto the cold stones, and scurried to Estrela’s side. She could be touched, and she was very warm.

Up above, Fingon said, “I never knew that, about the horses.”

Russandol sighed. “Of course not,” he said. “Couldn’t have the lot of you ragging on me for being a baby. There was a time I had appearances to keep up.”

Estrela’s arms tightened around Frog. He blinked drowsily. Sleep was very near.

Russandol went on talking to Fingon for a little while, their voices rising and falling like leaves bobbing on water.

Frog was glad that none of them were afraid anymore.


End file.
